
Class ~ £U \** lh 

Book_ .1 & B5 

CopightH 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



3Ttts:crfi!0lI Lecture* on Smmortalitp, 



IMMORTALITY AND THE NEW THEODICY. By 
George A. Gordon, D. D. i6mo, $1.00. 1896. 

HUMAN IMMORTALITY. Two supposed Objections 
to the Doctrine. By Professor William James. 
i6mo, $1.00. 1897. 

DIONYSOS AND IMMORTALITY: The Greek Faith 
in Immortality as affected by the rise of Individualism. 
By President Benjamin Ide Wheeler. i6mo, $1.00. 
1898. 

THE CONCEPTION OF IMMORTALITY. By Pro- 
fessor Josiah Royce. i6mo, $1.00. 1899. 

LIFE EVERLASTING. By John Fiske, LL.D. i6mo, 
$1.00, net. Postage, 7 cents. 1900. 

SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY. By William Oslbr, 

M. D., LL.D. i6mo, 85 cents, net. Postage 6 cents. 

1904. 
THE ENDLESS LIFE. By Samuel M. Crothers, 

D. D. i6mo, 75 cents, net. Postage 6 cents. 1905. 
INDIVIDUALITY AND IMMORTALITY. By Professor 

Wilhelm Ostwald. i6mo, 75 cents, net. Postage' 

6 cents. 1906. 
BUDDHISM AND IMMORTALITY. By William S. 

Bigelow, M. D. i6mo, 75 cents, net. Postage 

6 cents. 1908. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Boston and New York 



BUDDHISM AND 
IMMORTALITY 



Hfyt JHngerfioll iletture, 1908 



BUDDHISM 
AND IMMORTALITY 



BY 



WILLIAM STURGIS BIGELOW 







BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

(Cfce ftfoer£i&e pres>', Cambri&se 

1908 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

OCT 23 1908 

Copyright Entry 
CLASS OC AXC, No, 



*£ 



COPYRIGHT, IQ08, BY WILLIAM STURGIS BIGELOW 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published October^ iqo8 



THE INGERSOLL LECTURESHIP 



Extract from the will of Miss Caroline Haskell Ingersoll, 

who died in Keene, County of Cheshire ', New 

Hampshire, Jan. 26, i8gj. 

First. In carrying out the wishes of my late 
beloved father, George Goldthwait Ingersoll, as 
declared by him in his last will and testament, I 
give and bequeath to Harvard University in Cam- 
bridge, Mass., where my late father was graduated, 
and which he always held in love and honor, the 
sum of Five thousand dollars ($5,000) as a fund for 
the establishment of a Lectureship on a plan some- 
what similar to that of the Dudleian lecture, that is 
— one lecture to be delivered each year, on any con- 
venient day between the last day of May and the 
first day 01 December, on this subject, "the Im- 
mortality of Man," said lecture not to form a part 
of the usual college course, nor to be delivered by 
any Professor or Tutor as part of his usual routine 
of instruction, though any such Professor or Tutor 
may be appointed to such service. The choice of 
said lecturer is not to be limited to any one religious 
denomination, nor to any one profession, but may 
be that of either clergyman or layman, the appoint- 
ment to take place at least six months before the 
delivery of said lecture. The above sum to be 
safely invested and three fourths of the annual in- 
terest thereof to be paid to the lecturer for his 
services and the remaining fourth to be expended 
in the publishment and gratuitous distribution of 
the lecture, a copy of which is always to be fur- 
nished by the lecturer for such purpose. The same 
lecture to be named and known as "the Ingersoll 
lecture on the Immortality of Man." 



BUDDHISM AND 
IMMORTALITY 



BUDDHISM 

AND 

IMMORTALITY 

THE view of the Immortality 
of Man which I have the 
privilege of stating is, broadly 
speaking, that of the Buddhist religion. 
But Buddhism, like many other great 
religions, is divided into main churches 
and subdivided into sects: and we find 
conspicuously two broad divisions, 
commonly called Northern and South- 
ern Buddhism, — the former having 
its recognized centre in the north of 
India, in Nepaul; the latter in Ceylon* 
The history, the significance, and the 
relations of these two divisions consti- 



4 BUDDHISM AND 

tute a vast field of study, into which 
we cannot attempt to enter to-night. 

What I have to say relates primarily 
to the Northern or Nepaulese Bud- 
dhism, and more especially to the doc- 
trines of the two closely allied sects 
which represent that form of Buddhism 
in Japan. These sects are known re- 
spectively as the Tendai and the Shin- 
gon. The whole of Northern Bud- 
dhism is closely allied to ^rahminism, 
with which it is historically directly 
connected. There is a close resem- 
blance in the tenets and doctrines of 
the two religions, even in their super- 
ficial aspects ; and the more deeply 
they are studied, the closer is the con- 
nection found to be. The forms of re- 
ligious service are essentially the same 
in both ; and even in Japan to-day the 



IMMORTALITY 5 

greater part of the Shingon and Ten- 
dai ritual is not in Japanese but in San- 
scrit, and is identical with that which 
has been in use in India since before 
the time of Buddha, — so long before, 
in fact, that there is no historic record 
of its origin, and there is reason to be- 
lieve that it antedates written history- 
altogether. It certainly appears to be 
the oldest ritual now in actual use in 
the world. A similar correspondence 
between India and Japan is found to 
hold essentially good in regard to those 
special presentations or aspects of the 
great central force of the universe, 
which are embodied in anthropomor- 
phic forms and recognized as separate 
deities. 

It may be said in passing, that for 
the understanding of such a vast and 



6 BUDDHISM AND 

intricate system of thought, or even 
of so small a part of it as we have to 
consider here, the student handicaps 
himself with needless difficulties if he 
begins by classifying it under some such 
customary heading as Pantheism, Poly- 
theism, Monotheism, Materialism, 
Idealism, and the like. We all carry 
in our intellectual pockets a quantity of 
gummed labels bearing the names of 
such familiar categories, which we are 
ready to attach to any new packet of 
documents, however large, after exam- 
ining the first one or two, and we then 
expect to find that all the rest fit ex- 
actly into the Procrustean limits that 
we habitually associate with that par- 
ticular title. Whereas in the present 
case the exact contrary is the fact ; and 
we find, on the one hand, that there 



IMMORTALITY 7 

is ample room to attach almost every 
label that the mind of man has con- 
ceived; and, on the other, that each 
one is by itself inadequate. 

Starting, therefore, without preju- 
dice of any sort, I am going to try to 
set before you, in such brief outline as 
the allotted time allows, an epitome 
or digest of the teaching of these two 
Buddhist sects, the Tendai and the 
Shingon, in regard to the special sub- 
ject to consider which this lectureship 
has been established, — the Immortal- 
ity of Man. Part of what I have to 
say is of such elementary simplicity 
that I almost apologize for saying it, 
and indeed only do so to be sure that 
we start together. Part, again, though 
less simple, is familiar doctrine that 
may be heard here in the West in any 



8 BUDDHISM AND 

lecture room or from any pulpit. And 
part, again, lies so remote from our 
ordinary Occidental habits of thought 
that I shall hold myself fortunate if 
I can succeed in making it intelli- 
gible. 

The generous founder of this an- 
nual lecture chose the title well, in 
assuming the existence of something 
called man, and restricting the dis- 
cussion to the question of how long 
that something lasts. Consciously or 
unconsciously, we all make the same 
assumption ; for it has been well said 
that "to doubt our own existence is 
to call in question the very existence 
of our doubt." In this attitude we 
have the support alike of the oldest 
religion and the newest science ; for 
Poincare, in his latest scientific work, 



IMMORTALITY 9 

after discussing in detail the theories 
of force and matter and motion, of 
electricity and light and ether, sums 
up the state of the most modern 
knowledge in these concise words, — 
" Something exists." 

However reckless and extravagant 
this statement may seem, let us ac- 
cept it provisionally, and further, for 
convenience, let us give this some- 
thing a name. Let us provisionally 
call it ourselves, — you and I, — I to 
each one of us, — and see what are 
some of the most obvious things to 
be said about it. What do we mean 
by it ? What did Descartes mean by 
it when he said : " I think, — there- 
fore I am"; and thereby implied 
the inevitable correlative : " I do not 
think, — therefore I am not"? What 



io BUDDHISM AND 

is the " I" ? What is the " thought " ? 
Are they the same thing or different 
things ? Can either exist without the 
other ? 

Let us consider for a moment the 
ordinary popular view. According to 
this, man is a compound of a mate- 
rial and tangible part called the body 
and an immaterial and intangible part 
called the soul. 

The facts about the body are simple, 
obvious, and familiar. Its existence is 
as certain as that of the rest of the ma- 
terial universe, and, except during life, 
it obeys the same laws. This is a fact of 
observation like any other ; for instance, 
like the fact that fire burns or that water 
runs down hill. 

The case of the soul is less simple. 
Being invisible and intangible, its ex- 



IMMORTALITY n 

istence is commonly assumed on two 
grounds. First, by inference, through 
its apparent effects. Second, by what 
we call self-consciousness. Under the 
head of effects we recognize, as most 
obvious, the formation and mainte- 
nance of unstable chemical compounds 
not formed by inorganic matter, and 
the building up of these compounds 
through intermediate stages of struc- 
ture into a cooperative organism acting 
as an individual until death, when it 
ceases to act as a unit and disintegrates 
like any other unstable chemical pro- 
duct. The very fact of death, therefore, 
is evidence of the existence of some- 
thing besides inorganic matter during 
life. 

Secondly, as regards self-conscious- 
ness. We are all, as we familiarly say, 



12 BUDDHISM AND 

conscious of our own existence. Under 
this statement we habitually include, in 
more or less confusion, several distinct 
elements. 

First, the existence of our material 
bodies as objects of sensory perception, 
like any other material objects, such as 
chairs, tables, or other peoples' bodies, 
the only essential limitation being that 
no sensory organ can perceive itself. 
The eye sees the hand, but the eye 
does not see itself. To suppose it could 
would be a contradiction in terms, for 
normal sensation implies disturbance 
of a normal equilibrium by an external 
stimulus. 

Second, of certain sensations, pleas- 
urable or painful, originating not out- 
side but inside the body itself. 

Third, of certain disturbances ap- 



IMMORTALITY 13 

parently not of material origin, that we 
classify as passions or emotions. 

Fourth, of what we call aptitudes 
and their opposites. 

Fifth, of desires or inclinations and 
their opposites. 

Lastly, of something of a wholly 
different character, consciously closer to 
the centre than anything else, and dif- 
fering from the other forms in being the 
only form of consciousness to which 
we are not passive. This we call will. 
We say, I feel sensation, pain, or emo- 
tion; but we never say, I feel my will. 
It is always subjective and active. 

These are the main facts, simply 
stated, in the commonest terms of daily 
life. Let us look at them at a differ- 
ent angle. I once asked Dr. Holmes, 
toward the end of his life, the question, 



i 4 BUDDHISM AND 

"What is a man?" He answered, with- 
out hesitation, "A series of states of 
consciousness." 

The word "series" introduces the 
element of time, the relation of which 
to states of consciousness is empirical 
and not essential. Broadly speaking, 
certain states of consciousness associ- 
ated directly or indirectly with matter 
occur in sequence in every-day human 
experience, but the same states may 
occur simultaneously under exceptional 
circumstances. It is well known that in 
the sudden presence of imminent and 
apparently certain death, the accumu- 
lated states of consciousness of a life- 
time sometimes revive simultaneously 
in a single flash. The events of the 
whole past are seen down to the most 
minute and remote details, like a land- 



IMMORTALITY 15 

scape under a flash of lightning. Dr. 
Holmes himself had had this experi- 
ence on one occasion, just before losing 
consciousness altogether while drown- 
ing, and the memory of the occurrence 
persisted after resuscitation. But if, in 
answering my question, he had left out 
the one word "series," Dr. Holmes's 
definition would have been identical 
with that of Buddhism, which is this, 
— "A man consists of states of con- 
sciousness." 

Now, from this point of view, the 
whole question of the Immortality of 
Man is bound up with the question of 
the persistence of these states. This 
persistence depends on their character 
and origin. Some may persist longer 
than others. The states of conscious- 
ness that we recognize in every action 



16 BUDDHISM AND 

of daily life are obviously divisible into 
two classes, namely, those that ori- 
ginate from without and those that 
originate from within. The first are 
conditioned by space and time, the 
latter are not. 

Let us take a homely illustration, 
the simpler the better. Each of you, let 
us say, had breakfast this morning. 
While you were eating it you were con- 
scious of it, how it looked and tasted, 
and these states of consciousness were 
imposed on your minds from the out- 
side by the action of matter on matter, 
— the matter of the breakfast on the 
matter of your nerves of sight and taste. 
This action is as constant as any other 
purely mechanical action, and if your 
sensory and nervous machinery is in 
normal running order, the resulting 



IMMORTALITY 17 

states of consciousness are as constant 
as the cause that produces them. All 
these forms of consciousness, I repeat, 
were imposed on your minds from with- 
out in the form of distinct sensations, 
as we call them, sensations existing at 
that particular time and place. 

Again, you are conscious of being in 
this hall to-night. As before, this con- 
sciousness is imposed on your minds 
from without in the form of distinct 
sensations existing at this particular 
time and place. You see the hall and 
the audience exactly as you saw your 
breakfast-room and your breakfast. 

Now, think, for a moment, of your 
breakfasts. Where and when is that 
thought? Is it here and now, or there 
and then ? Plainly it is here and now, 
because you are here, now, and it is 



18 BUDDHISM AND 

your thought. Equally plainly it is 
there and then, or it would not be the 
thought of this morning's breakfast. 
It is therefore both. Now a state of 
consciousness conditioned by two mu- 
tually exclusive opposites is uncondi- 
tioned by either. In other words, your 
thought is unconditioned by space and 
time. 

By what, r then, is it conditioned ? 
The answer is as important as it is ob- 
vious. It is conditioned by your will, 
— the act of volition that calls the 
thought of the breakfast into being, 
and not by the direct sensory impres- 
sions, whose forms and sum it repro- 
duces. Herein lies the fundamental 
difference between the consciousness 
of the breakfast as you eat it, and the 
consciousness of it that you, being in 



IMMORTALITY 19 

another place, create by an act of will 
twelve hours afterward. 

This second state of consciousness 
is conditioned only by the will, and 
we can make it what we choose. If our 
mental machinery is in good working 
order, we can recall the breakfast ex- 
actly as it was. This we call memory. 
Or, if we like, we can increase or di- 
minish or alter it in any particular. For 
coffee and rolls, we may substitute 
ortolans and peacocks' tongues, and so 
on. There is no limit to it. This we 
call imagination ; and what I want to 
emphasize is that memory and imagi- 
nation are identical in being states of 
consciousness produced by the will, 
and differ only in the closeness of their 
correspondence with antecedent states. 

Here, then, at the outset are two 



20 BUDDHISM AND 

opposite ways in which states of con- 
sciousness may be produced. First, 
from without, by matter acting on 
matter, either through contact, direct 
or indirect, or by means of vibrations, 
such as those of sound and light. This 
we may call, for convenience, the sen- 
sory origin of consciousness, since it 
involves direct relation through the 
senses with the great machinery of ex- 
ternal nature, — machinery which goes 
at its own rate and in its own way, and 
acts as a stimulus to consciousness 
on the one hand and a pendulum or 
balance wheel to it on the other. Sec- 
ond, from within, by the action of the 
will. 

Is there a third way ? Obviously 
there is. Suppose we disconnect the 
pendulum of material nature from one 



IMMORTALITY 21 

end of the machine and the guiding 
motive power of the will from the 
other, the wheels will keep on turning 
for a time by their own momentum, and 
states of consciousness will ensue which 
are apparently spontaneous. The most 
familiar instance of this is in common 
dreams. Such states of conscious- 
ness, having neither guide on the one 
hand nor check on the other, are usu- 
ally dislocated and confused, but in 
this respect there is, of course, a vast 
range of difference. A dream may be, 
and commonly is, incoherent to the 
point of grotesqueness. It may be any- 
thing from that up to a logical continu- 
ous sequence, as distinct and vivid as 
a waking reality. In a well-known and 
often cited case, such a sequence con- 
tinued night after night in the form 



22 BUDDHISM AND 

of a separate dream-life, with its own 
events and incidents, until the dreamer 
found himself literally unable to tell 
which of the two alternate lives he was 
leading was the real one. Each had its 
orderly succession of days and nights, 
and going to sleep in one meant waking 
up in the other. Each was real while 
it lasted, the other being the dream 
until he came back to it, when the 
conditions were again reversed. It is 
well to bear this case in mind as a good 
illustration of an important, though 
elementary, fact, namely, that every 
complete state of consciousness is real 
to itself, and unreal to other states. 

We have, then, broadly speaking, 
three separate and definite ways in 
which states of consciousness may ori- 
ginate, — one external, and two in- 



IMMORTALITY 23 

ternal; namely, through the senses, 
by the will, and spontaneously. The 
first, in a normal organism, — and we 
are not considering here any patho- 
logical conditions whatever, — is as 
regular and invariable as the order 
of external nature, on which it is 
based. The second conforms to ex- 
ternal nature or deviates from it, as 
we choose. When it conforms, we call 
it memory. When it deviates, we call 
it imagination. The third is gener- 
ally irregular, and depends on the mo- 
mentum or impetus of the thinking 
machinery itself. 

I have spoken so far of external and 
internal stimuli as exciting conscious- 
ness, and most of you have accepted 
these terms without giving them a sec- 
ond thought. Internal and external, 



24 BUDDHISM AND 

subjective and objective, ego and non- 
ego, self and the rest of the universe, 
— these categories are not only famil- 
iar, but from our western point of 
view fundamental, and represent the 
first great obvious distinction which at 
once underlies and dominates most, if 
not all, of our religious, philosophical, 
and scientific thought. Consciously or 
unconsciously, we habitually think of 
ourselves and the universe in those 
terms. 

Let us examine them a little more 
closely. Internal and external — ex- 
ternal to what ? 

Certainly, not external to conscious- 
ness, in the Buddhist view, for they are 
consciousness, and nothing else. To 
say that they are external to it is a con- 
tradiction in terms. They exist only in 



IMMORTALITY 25 

consciousness. If they are external to 
it, they cease to exist. 

External to the body, then? This is 
more like it. The body is a material 
object ; and whatever else it may be 
in its relation to the phenomena of its 
own organic life, it is itself matter in 
its relation to other matter. 

What, then, do we mean by matter 
as we ordinarily understand the word ? 
For practical purposes we commonly 
mean aggregations of centres of vibra- 
tion whose rate lies between the low- 
est infra-red and the highest ultra-vio- 
let which are the normal working 
limits of our senses. 

What are the simplest and most ob- 
vious characteristics of such matter, 
essential conditions of its existence by 
virtue of which it is matter ? There 



26 BUDDHISM AND 

are of course two, time and space. This 
is a commonplace. Yet it is of funda- 
mental importance in this connection. 
For if, as I have tried to show you, cer- 
tain states of consciousness, namely, the 
mechanical or sensory forms, have their 
origin in the action of matter on matter, 
then those states of consciousness will 
necessarily be subject in form to the 
two conditions of which I have just 
spoken. 

This point is fundamental and vital. 
It is the turning-point on which the 
whole question of immortality hinges. 
Matter is conditioned by space and 
time. Direct sensory consciousness, 
being based on matter, is necessarily 
equally so conditioned. But states of 
consciousness not based on matter are 
not. 



IMMORTALITY 27 

Now, the space and time relations 
of matter may be summed up in one 
word, separateness ; those of conscious- 
ness in the opposite term, unity. 

This seems too obvious to be worth 
stating. One chair is separate from 
another chair, one tree from another 
tree, one animal body from another 
animal body, — nor can you, by any 
means, make two into one. But with 
consciousness the exact contrary is 
true. Unity, not separateness, is the 
essential characteristic. Two men can- 
not sit in the same chair at the same 
time, but any number of men can think , 
of the same chair at the same time.^ 
This seems a proposition of childish 
simplicity, and so it is, but it is the 
turning-point of the whole matter. 
I repeat, the essential characteristic of 



28 BUDDHISM AND 

matter is separateness. That of con- 
sciousness is unity. You cannot make 
two chairs one. You cannot make the 
consciousness of a chair anything but 
one, no matter how many minds it oc- 
curs in. A proof of this last propo- 
sition, if proof were needed, is in the 
use of language. You speak of a chair 
to your neighbor. The word corre- 
sponds to a definite state of conscious- 
ness in you which you want to excite in 
him. If the word chair fails to do so, if 
it excites a different state, or none, lan- 
guage is useless. Human intercourse 
is based on the assumption that states 
of consciousness, whether called up 
by the arbitrary signal of a word or by 
direct sensory impressions, are con- 
stant in every mind, and identical 
in all minds. If it were not so, we 



IMMORTALITY 29 

should be incontinently reduced to 
chaos. 

So far we have dealt with states of 
consciousness as external and internal 
to the body. But how about the body 
itself? We have considered it as the 
vehicle or medium of transmission 
of mechanical stimuli from external 
sources to the conscious centre, which 
for convenience we have regarded as 
a sort of dial or indicator hung midway 
between the senses on the one hand and 
the will on the other. It is like the dial 
of a watch. The hands go at a definite 
rate exactly in time with the move- 
ments of the physical universe. That 
is sensory consciousness. But you can 
set them anywhere you like by rotating 
the appropriate knob. That is voli- 
tional consciousness. We have classed 



30 BUDDHISM AND 

such sensory stimuli as external. But 
how shall we class stimuli that arise 
within the body itself? How about 
physical pain ? 

The case here is essentially identical 
with that of other sensory stimuli. 
You touch a knife. This is ordinary 
sensation. You cut your finger with it. 
Pain ensues. Either case is an instance 
of the impact of matter on matter, — 
the matter of the knife on the matter 
of your nervous terminations. The 
pain lasts more or less till the cut is 
well, the local disturbances of inflam- 
mation and repair still acting directly 
on the nerves of sensation, the same 
nerves through which both the touch 
and the cut were originally felt. The 
practical difference is that the pain is a 
danger signal. It shows that something 



IMMORTALITY 31 

is wrong. That something may be a 
cut, or the grating of a rheumatic joint, 
or a neuralgic pain, but in every case 
something is wrong. When a pain is 
due to external injury, natural selec- 
tion fosters its avoidance. Avoiding 
pain means avoiding injury. Pain is 
therefore, primarily, an element in the 
conservation of the life of the individ- 
ual, and therefore of the species, in the 
presence of outside attacks, and it is to 
be regarded as in this respect like any 
other element in the process of natural 
selection. 

In this connection the following 
stages are gone through: — 

1. Animals who feel pain and avoid 
it, thereby avoiding injury, tend to 
be preserved by natural selection, as 
against those who do not. 



32 BUDDHISM AND 

a. This habitual action of avoidance 
becomes reflex by habit, the withdrawal 
of a hand when pricked or burnt finally 
becoming automatic, and accomplished 
by a short circuit of the nervous tele- 
graph wires without the intervention 
of consciousness. 

3. In natural selection, as elsewhere, 
an ounce of prevention is worth a 
pound of cure, and the recognition 
and avoidance of pain as it occurs is 
amplified, still by natural selection, 
into recognition and avoidance of the 
source of pain as it approaches. And, 
by association rendered keen by in- 
herited experience, the pain itself is in 
a measure anticipated, this anticipation 
being associated with the simultaneous 
desire to escape from it; and the com- 
bination of these two forms of con- 



IMMORTALITY 33 

sciousness, like two metals fused into 
an alloy, in which neither is recogniz- 
able, produces what appears to be a 
new and wholly different form, which 
we classify as an emotion and call fear. 
The other emotions have a similar 
origin. Anger, for example, is the com- 
bination of the recognition of approach- 
ing danger and the desire to repel it. 
I need not multiply instances to sug- 
gest to you that all the so-called lower 
passions and emotions are nothing but 
the accumulated effects of natural se- 
lection acting on single cases in favor 
of the conservation of the species, this 
action being favored and aided by the 
tendency of habitual action to become 
reflex. In this latter element lies their 
danger as well as their advantage. In 
a perfect organism they are absolutely 



34 BUDDHISM AND 

under the control of the will, which 
is another way of saying that many of 
them cease to exist. 

These passions and emotions are 
transmitted in accordance with another 
law stated by Darwin, namely, that 
the traits most sure to be inherited are 
those which have been inherited long- 
est, they being necessarily most directly 
concerned with the persistence of the 
type. 

First in this classification comes the 
need of safety; then of food. Both 
these are the immediate needs of the 
individual, and are therefore selfish, 
centripetal, and exclusive. 

Then come the multiform needs 
connected with reproduction. These 
are of two kinds, those connected with 
the individual and those connected 



IMMORTALITY 35 

with offspring. The former are, like 
the need of safety and food, essentially 
centripetal and selfish, though capable 
of expansion. The latter are centrif- 
ugal, altruistic, and inclusive. 

From the need of food, the need of 
safety, and the individual interests con- 
nected with reproduction spring the 
selfish lower emotions, such as anger, 
hate, fear, jealousy. 

The unselfish forms of love, espe- 
cially of parental love, by a mere ex- 
pansion of terms become charity and 
altruism, and later by admixture of 
other elements, such as imagination 
and desire, become hope and faith. Ma- 
ternal love is the source and origin of 
all human virtues. This is not a figure 
of speech. It is a fact of evolution. 

Desire is the momentum of a checked 



36 BUDDHISM AND 

reflex. Aptitudes are reflexes of 
slightly greater complexity, and as a 
rule not concerned directly with type 
preservation. We say that a boy has 
an aptitude for music, but not an apti- 
tude for eating. 

So we may for convenience add an- 
other to our list of the forms of con- 
sciousness. We began with the sensory 
impressions in their five familiar forms. 
We added sensations of pleasure and 
pain arising within the body itself. We 
then saw that certain reactions to 
these impressions concerned in the 
preservation of the type were filtered 
out and fostered by natural selection, 
emphasized and strengthened by habit 
and its consequent reflexes, till their 
origin was for the most part lost to 
view, and they reappeared in the form 



IMMORTALITY 37 

of abstract passions, emotions, apti- 
tudes, etc., forms of consciousness so 
remote from that from which they 
sprang that they are almost unrecog- 
nizable in their disguise. 

So far we have been concerned only 
with the ordinary experience of human 
life as everybody knows it, and the 
count up to this point is essentially 
complete. 

Is there anything else? 

I have again and again referred to 
the will, and you have understood me 
without a moment's hesitation. This 
will is a part of the normal conscious- 
ness of each one of you, yet it is 
neither a part of sensation nor emo- 
tion, but on the contrary is capable of 
dominating both. 

What is it? Ask your own con- 



38 BUDDHISM AND 

sciousness. Sensations originate out- 
side and inside the body; emotions, 
inside. But the will is deeper than 
either, and they are both objective to it. 
We cannot classify it with anything 
else. We cannot describe it in terms 
of any other form of consciousness. 
We are conscious through our bodies 
and of our bodies, but the conscious- 
ness of the will is direct. We cannot 
separate ourselves from it. We can- 
not stand off and examine it. We 
cannot modify it by anything else. It 
itself modifies everything within its 
scope. Other forms of consciousness 
are objective in their relation to it, but 
it is never objective to them. It may 
be overpowered by sensations, emo- 
tions, or passions, through its own 
weakness or their strength. It often is. 



IMMORTALITY 39 

But its attitude towards them, whether 
resisting or directing them, is always 
essentially and necessarily active. It 
exists in no other form than the sub- 
jective form. It is inconceivable in any 
other form. If it is not active, it is 
not will. There is nothing in our con- 
sciousness deeper. It underlies and 
overlies and permeates all other forms, 
and, moreover, — what is of immea- 
surably more importance, — it can, if 
need be, create them. This last is the 
central fact to which all that I have 
said leads up. Fully to realize this is to 
hold the key to immortality. Will is 
the assertion of a form of conscious- 
ness from the centre outward. When 
this is opposed by another form of 
consciousness, intruding from the cir- 
cumference inward, we recognize a hin- 



40 BUDDHISM AND 

drance to the free action of the will, 
and we talk of "necessity." But such 
intrusive forms are, as we have seen, 
ultimately and essentially of material 
origin. They come from or through 
the body, — the material, separate per- 
sonality. If it were not for these, the 
will would act freely. The separate 
personal consciousness with its off- 
shoots is therefore the only obstacle 
to complete freedom of the will. Com- 
plete freedom of the will is complete 
freedom of consciousness, and com- 
plete freedom of consciousness from 
the habitual and empirical limitations 
of personality is complete freedom of 
the will. The terms are interchange- 
able. The only will that is not free is 
the personal will. 

Descartes said, "I think, therefore 



IMMORTALITY 41 

I am." It is an imperfect formula at 
best, but it would have been a better 
statement had he said, "I am con- 
scious, therefore I am" ; and best of all 
had he said, " I will, therefore I am." 
Now, is there anything more? How 
about the "self"? How about the so- 
called character? Is there not a separate 
"self" back of it all,— a "self" that 
feels and wills, but is neither feeling 
nor volition, any more than the finger 
is the pin that pricks it or the nervous 
stimulus that moves it? Surely it would 
seem there must be. Surely the exist- 
ence of such a separate self would seem 
to be the basis of all human actions. 
Even at the beginning of this lecture, 
our starting-point was to assume that 
"something exists," and provisionally 
to call that something ourselves. 



42 BUDDHISM AND 

What do we mean by the "self"? 
Obviously it is a limitation of some 
sort. What limits it? What shuts off 
the self from the rest of the universe? 
We are so small, the universe is so 
great, we say. Yet all we know of the 
universe is inside our heads. Are our 
heads, then, of cosmic dimensions? Or 
is the universe smaller than it seems? 
There is an inconsistency here some- 
where. If the universe will go into a 
man's head, what is there about the 
man that is smaller than the universe ? 

Put in this way, the question an- 
swers itself. The man's material body 
is smaller, and that is the only thing 
about him that is. His mind, that is, 
his consciousness, is larger, and, what 
is more, it is indefinitely larger. It 
could take in a dozen universes, or a 



IMMORTALITY 43 

million, as easily as one. Conscious- 
ness has no dimensions. 

But, you may say, if a man consists 
of states of consciousness, what, then, 
are the limitations of the "self"? If 
these states of consciousness may in- 
clude the universe, and more too, why 
is not the self co-extensive with the 
universe ? 

Now, this is exactly what it is. 
The self is co-extensive with the uni- 
verse. The difference between organic 
beings is merely how much of them- 
selves they realize. The separate per- 
sonality is real only in terms of mat- 
ter and in such forms of consciousness 
as originate or are expressed in terms 
of material existence. 

The self is believed to be a sepa- 
rate entity only because of the over- 



44 BUDDHISM AND 

whelming preponderance in human 
life of sensory experience, which 
through habit, fostered by natural 
selection, tends to impose its laws 
on all human consciousness. This is 
the fundamental fact of human life. 
Consciousness is continuous and uni- 
versal. Matter is separate and par- 
ticular. But we habitually think in 
terms of matter. In short, we live 
in terms of matter. It is only on 
those terms that we live at all. If we 
deviate from them in the slightest 
degree, our earthly career is promptly 
terminated by the simple law of natu- 
ral selection, the survival of the fit- 
test to survive. 

Each man therefore carries in him- 
self the conditions and limitations of 
his own universe, and it is for him to 



IMMORTALITY 45 

say how large that universe shall be. 
Habitual actions always tend to be- 
come reflex, and the more attention 
he pays to his own separate material 
existence, the more restricted his uni- 
verse becomes. It is a tautology to say 
that attention to individual physical 
needs, physical sensations, and the cen- 
tripetal reflexes growing from them, 
tends to perpetuate and insure physical 
existence. On the other hand, every- 
thing that tends away from self, such as 
unselfish love, parental love, and the 
altruistic centrifugal reflexes devel- 
oped from them, tends to expansion ; 
and the larger the included circle of 
altruistic action is, the smaller the 
danger becomes of perpetuating the 
restrictions of separate individual ex- 
istence imposed by natural selection 



46 BUDDHISM AND 

acting in and through the material 
world. 

This conflict of the centripetal and 
centrifugal forces, of which the so- 
called self is the centre, is the basis 
of morality. Broadly speaking, what 
is done for one's self is bad ; what is 
done for some one else is good. Con- 
sciously or unconsciously, this idea 
lies at the foundation of all the high- 
est moral teaching. The highest vir- 
tues are those that conduce to the 
extinction of terrestrial types. The 
struggle for existence is the struggle 
for terrestrial, that is, material exist- 
ence. If a selfish man and an altruist 
are wrecked on a desert island with 
only food enough for one, the selfish 
man will survive. The penalty of al- 
truism is extermination. Yet no one 



IMMORTALITY 47 

would maintain for a moment that the 
altruist is not the higher type of man. 

If I have been so fortunate as to 
make the subject clear up to this point, 
you will understand that the material 
self is the fixed point from which man 
is measured. To expand the conscious- 
ness away from it means spiritual 
growth. To contract toward it means 
spiritual deterioration. To work away 
from it means, in familiar language, 
virtue; to work toward it, vice. 

To work toward it requires no ef- 
fort whatever. A man has only to let 
himself go, to make himself passive to 
the law of the survival of the fittest, 
and he drops there as naturally as a 
stone falls, if he is dominated, as most 
men are, by the lower reflexes. The 
upper altruistic reflexes will eventually 



48 BUDDHISM AND 

carry him the other way as they be- 
come strong enough. But the com- 
monest condition of the human race 
is the natural passive tendency to grav- 
itate to the centre, on the one hand, 
opposed by the active force of the will 
and of whatever higher reflexes a man 
may have, on the other. As before, we 
come back to the will as the deter- 
minant factor. 

If you have followed me so far, you 
will follow me a step further. If a man 
consists of states of consciousness, as 
the Buddhist doctrine affirms, then so 
far as any of them cease, the man ceases. 
So far as any of them last, the man 
lasts, and lasts as long as they do, and 
no longer. 

Have we any evidence on how long 
they last? 



IMMORTALITY 49 

A good deal. Let us take a priori 
evidence first. Those qualities, said 
Darwin, that have been longest inher- 
ited are surest to be inherited. And 
the same is true of the states of con- 
sciousness. Those which are formed 
most slowly dissolve most slowly. 

Sensory impressions come in a 
perpetual shower, and the drops for 
the most part dry as soon as they fall. 
Ninety-nine hundredths of our sen- 
sory impressions are transitory. Most 
of them do not call for action of any 
sort, any more than the passing land- 
scape seen from a car window. 

But certain ones do call for action; 
and if they are repeated often enough, 
that action becomes first habitual, then 
reflex or automatic, and any further 
stimulus of the same sort tends to be 



50 BUDDHISM AND 

dealt with primarily by that habitual 
reflex, and only secondarily by the con- 
sciousness and will. Now it is the sum 
of a number of such habitual reflexes 
acting singly or together that we call 
character. It may be changed — it is 
changed more or less — during an 
ordinary life, but it is part of the 
makeup of every individual at birth. 
Where does it come from? From the 
parents ? 

The fact of the resemblance of off- 
spring to parents is a matter of every- 
day knowledge all over the world. In 
the West we call it an illustration of 
heredity or atavism, the persistence of 
a parental or ancestral type. In the 
East it is regarded as an illustration of 
rebirth or reincarnation. There is no 
mystery about it. There is no disagree- 



IMMORTALITY 51 

ment in regard to the facts. The West, 
talking in general colloquial terms of 
body and soul, regards the body in- 
herited from the parents — that is, the 
physical and material body — as the 
determinant factor, the mould to which 
all non-physical qualities necessarily 
conform, because they are in some way 
produced by or derived from it. 

The East, on the other hand, re- 
garding the collection of qualities fa- 
miliarly expressed by the term "soul" 
as dominant, says that a soul has re- 
newed its relations with the material 
world by rebirth, and gradually, in the 
process of normal growth, has forced 
the matter with which it is associated 
into more or less the same shape that it 
had beforejustas the seed in the course 
of normal growth forces the inorganic 



52 BUDDHISM AND 

matter of the air and soil into the shape 
of the plant from which it came. In 
Japanese the process is habitually 
known and spoken of by this resem- 
blance. The Japanese word for it is 
ingwa, in meaning seed and kwa 
flower. Of late years in the West the 
Sanscrit word karma has come to 
be somewhat loosely used with the 
same general meaning, though some 
of the highest Buddhist authorities in 
Japan are inclined to restrict the mean- 
ing of Karma to one element of the 
process. 

It is beyond my scope to-night to 
draw comparisons or present argu- 
ments. My business is simply to state 
the facts as they appear from the Bud- 
dhist standpoint. But I cannot help 
calling attention to one or two points 



IMMORTALITY 53 

bearing on the general problem of 
heredity versus rebirth : — 

First. If material constitution, that 
is, inheritance, which makes for iden- 
tity, modified by the tendency to vari- 
ation, is the cause of character, then, 
as the laws of matter do not vary, we 
have no way of accounting for the 
tendency to variation itself. It is an 
unknown x, an ultimate fact with no- 
thing behind it. 

Whereas, if the psychical character- 
istics — the soul, to take the shortest 
word — are the dominant factor, the 
tendency to variation follows as a 
matter of course. 

Second. If material constitution is 
the cause of character, the range of 
variation ought to be equally great 
in different forms of animal life ; for 



54 BUDDHISM AND 

instance, in men, sheep, and herring. 
Whereas, if the variation is deter- 
mined by the character, we ought to 
find the greatest variation where the 
characters are most complex,— which 
we do. 

Third. Family resemblance often 
asserts itself most clearly in the sec- 
ond generation. And it will be noticed 
that the very close resemblance of a 
child to a grandparent is generally as- 
sociated with two facts, — one, that the 
ancestor in question has been dead less 
than ten years ; the other, that the very 
marked resemblance occurs but once, 
no matter how numerous the grand- 
children may be. Heredity by phys- 
ical transmission offers no explanation 
of either fact. Whereas, from three to 
ten years is the ordinary interval for 



IMMORTALITY 55 

reincarnation, and the single resem- 
blance is the natural result of the re- 
birth of a single soul. 

The apparent bearing of Mendel's 
law here is too obvious to be over- 
looked. But it is perhaps too early to be 
sure just what is behind Mendel's law. 

Now, if character reincarnates, what 
becomes of it between whiles, between 
the time of one man's death and the 
next man's birth ? 

Let me remind you of Darwin again. 
" Those characteristics are most sure to 
be transmitted which have been long- 
est transmitted." But as I have tried 
to show you, character is built up 
of reflexes which are essentially and 
necessarily the oldest things about 
the individual organism. Therefore, 
according to Darwin, the character is 



56 BUDDHISM AND 

exactly what we should expect to find 
transmitted. 

But this does not answer the ques- 
tion of what becomes of it in the in- 
terval between death and birth. A 
living man's character we know, but a 
dead body has no character. If that 
character persists, it must be some- 
where in the mean time. There is a 
gap here to be filled up. 

Is there ? 

Let me ask you to recall that sub- 
ject of breakfast. Remember that no 
consciousness but immediate sensory 
consciousness is conditioned by space 
and time. Remember that immediate 
sensory consciousness depends on the 
action of the matter of the external 
universe on the matter of the body, 
and stops at death. And then consider 



IMMORTALITY 57 

the question of what has become of 
the reincarnating entity in the interval. 
From the point of view of that entity 
the interval as we know it does not 
exist, and it is our error to suppose 
that it does, — an error arising as usual 
from our disastrous habit of thinking 
in terms based on matter. 

Is, then, rebirth in one's own family 
the only alternative? 

By no means. The soul follows its 
strongest ties. These are generally the 
family ties, but not always ; and the 
soul always finds its own level where 
its own character is most at home. If 
it is too sensual and self-absorbed, that 
is, too centripetal, to find a human 
birth at all, it will find its birth as an 
animal ; and if it is not only too self- 
centred but too actively hostile to 



58 BUDDHISM AND 

everything outside itself to find a birth 
even as an animal, it will be born 
lower still. 

On the other hand, if its main trait 
is centrifugal and altruistic, it will be 
born where those qualities have fullest 
play in a higher state of existence. 

This higher state is mainly altruistic. 
The animal kingdom is mainly selfish. 
Human life is partly one and partly 
the other. 

Now, a word in conclusion about the 
material environment and incidents of 
a given life. I have said that conscious- 
ness is continuous. That means you 
cannot, so to speak, pick up a single 
idea alone any more than you can pick 
up a single knot in the middle of a 
fish-net. You may pick up any knot 
you like, but you will get also what 



IMMORTALITY 59 

is tied to it. And if, at any point of 
the summed-up consciousness of a 
man's life, there is tied the record of 
an injury done to another man, that 
record will infallibly remain tied; and 
when, in a later life, in disentangling the 
threads of his own existence in terms 
of time and space, he comes again to 
that particular point, that injury will 
return against him with the accuracy 
of a spring which expends when re- 
leased the exact energy required to com- 
press it, and the blow he receives will 
be just as hard as the blow he gave. 
Action and reaction are equal and 
opposite. 

From a higher point of view the 
case may be put in this way. Con- 
sciousness is continuous. Therefore, 
there is but one ultimate conscious- 



60 BUDDHISM AND 

ness. All beings are therefore one; 
and when one man strikes another, he 
strikes all men, including himself. Just 
when and where and how in terms of 
space and time he feels his own blow 
depends on circumstances, but sooner 
or later he will. A good deed comes 
back to the doer in just the same way. 
I just said that consciousness is one, 
and all beings are therefore one. The 
difference in beings, therefore, is how 
much they realize of this universal 
consciousness. The process of evolu- 
tion is the process of increase of the 
amount realized. The only thing that 
prevents a man from realizing the 
whole of it is the accumulated habit 
of countless generations of thinking 
in terms of self, that is, of the mate- 
rial self. It was not the fault of our 



IMMORTALITY 61 

struggling predecessors on this planet 
that they thought in these terms. Nat- 
ural selection took care of that. They 
had to, or die. 

This universal consciousness is what 
all existence started from and is re- 
turning to. How easily it can be reached 
by organized beings depends on their 
place in the scale of evolution. The 
fish is farther from it than the dog, 
and the dog farther than we, and we 
farther than higher beings. The im- 
portant thing to us is that, having 
evolved to the stage of human beings 
on our road to it, we can now see 
where we are going, and can greatly 
increase our speed if we like. 

There are two ways in which this 
may be done. Character, as I have so 
often said, is habitual consciousness; 



62 BUDDHISM AND 

and I have compared the consciousness, 
that is, the man, to the dial of a watch 
that registers either the movement of 
external nature or the impulse of the 
will. The two ways of growth corre- 
spond to this. In Buddhism they are 
called respectively the Objective or 
Exterior and the Subjective or Interior 
Methods or Systems. 1 

One is through the external acts of 
daily life, by so ordering them that the 
lower reflexes are gradually eliminated 
and the higher ones left and devel- 
oped. In other words, by doing good 
actions. 

The other is internal, through the 

1 In Japanese Kengyo and Mikkyo, literally, 
" Apparent* ' and "Non-apparent Systems.' ■ 
Occasional erroneous translation of these terms 
as "Revealed" and " Secret or Esoteric Doc- 
trine" has led to some popular misconceptions. 



IMMORTALITY 63 

alteration of the character and con- 
sciousness by the direct action of the 
will. 

The first involves the simple practice 
of ordinary morality. It is safe and 
sure, and for people occupied with the 
ordinary affairs of life, usually the best. 
The character is gradually altered, just 
as it was built up, by contact with the 
external world. The ordinary process 
of evolutionary growth is accelerated, 
but there is no break in it. 

The second way equally involves the 
practice of morality in daily life. In 
addition, it involves the direct action 
of the will on the character. It is gen- 
erally difficult, and except for people 
of thoroughly good character, or under 
the guidance of people of thoroughly 
good character, liable to be dangerous. 



64 BUDDHISM AND 

The reason is obvious. In most people 
the character, especially in the lower 
reflexes, is stronger than the will, even 
when the will does not habitually aid 
and abet them. In a direct conflict be- 
tween will and character, the character 
is apt to get the upper hand. I have 
spoken of the external material uni- 
verse as a sort of pendulum or balance 
wheel to the organism. In the present 
case the simile is exact. It goes at a 
certain rate, and keeps the delicate 
machinery of the human conscious- 
ness from deviating very far from that 
rate. It limits, to a certain extent, the 
amount of good or harm a man can 
do to other men and consequently to 
himself. But if the balance wheel is 
disconnected even temporarily, as in 
meditation, the first tendency of the 



IMMORTALITY 65 

clock is to obey the pressure of the 
mainspring, and run down violently 
and perhaps disastrously. If we try to 
check this pressure with the key, we 
hold it in very unstable equilibrium. 
And if we try with the key to make 
the hands go at any even rate, it is 
almost impossible. 

Now, the spring is the character, 
and the key is the will, and if the char- 
acter is bad, the result is disastrous, 
because in most people, as I have re- 
peated so often, natural selection has 
made the lower reflexes strongest, and 
it is consequently those that come into 
play first. 

Such exercise of the will acting di- 
rectly on the character has two effects : 
It expands the consciousness, and 
solidifies the character by strength- 
\\ 



66 BUDDHISM AND 

ening the reflexes. But if the con- 
sciousness is expanded and the re- 
flexes are strengthened in the direction 
of matter, the clock-hands are going 
round the wrong way, and the second 
state of the man is worse than the 
first. 

The ultimate object of life is to 
acquire freedom from the limitations 
of the material world by substituting 
volitional for sensory consciousness. 
They are limitations to be outgrown. 
There is a story of the last century 
that Emerson was stopped in the 
street by an excited member of the 
now forgotten sect of Millerites, who 
exclaimed, " Mr. Emerson, do you 
know that the world is going to be 
destroyed in ten days ? " " Well," 
said Emerson, " I don't see but we 



IMMORTALITY 67 

shall get along just as well with- 
out it." 

That is good Buddhist doctrine. 

The next step — the next step of 
the human race — is to learn how, as 
Emerson says, to get along without 
it, and without the limitations of 
thought that long contact with it has 
engendered. They are very hard to 
shake off. Even our ideas, — I use 
the plural advisedly, for hardly any 
two people agree completely, — our 
ideas of the highest possible state 
of existence are generally anthropo- 
morphic, and based on the familiar 
experience of daily life. We imagine 
ourselves celestial beings with celes- 
tial bodies, but those bodies have a 
close resemblance to our own. 

Such beings, if we may trust the 



68 BUDDHISM AND 

highest authorities, have the aspect 
of human beings. They have arms 
and legs and eyes and ears, noses 
and mouths, and none of these or- 
gans appear to be atrophied from 
disuse. Their pleasures may be more 
refined than ours and more in- 
tense, their bodies of finer matter 
than ours ; but they are still separate 
individuals, and in so far forth their 
existence is governed by the laws of 
separation, which are the laws of mat- 
ter. The distinctions of subject and 
object, of ego. and non-ego, of ex- 
ternal and internal, of active and pas- 
sive, still hold good, and such beings 
live under the same laws of action 
and reaction and interaction that gov- 
ern us. The highest form of happi- 
ness we can conceive for them is 



IMMORTALITY 69 

expressed in expanded terms of our 
own lives, in an inexhaustible oppor- 
tunity for the satisfaction of an inex- 
haustible desire, whether'' for work or 
play or worship. 

Such glorified celestial existence is 
the final goal of most religions. In 
Northern Buddhism it is not the goal, 
but an intermediate step in normal 
evolution between the human con- 
sciousness and the infinite conscious- 
ness, and the difference between these 
is as great as that between the dimen- 
sions of the material physical body and 
the whole physical universe. 

You are all more or less familiar 
with that extraordinary entity upon 
whose inferential existence the lines 
of modern scientific research seem to 
converge, the interstellar ether, which 



70 BUDDHISM AND 

seems likely to prove the ultimate 
form of matter out of which every- 
thing comes and into which every- 
thing must eventually return. You 
know the seemingly contradictory 
qualities that the hypothesis of its 
existence involves, — how it is per- 
fectly rigid and perfectly elastic, per- 
fectly dense and perfectly penetrable, 
hot and cold, heavy and light, and 
so on as far as we like to go. But, as 
I have said, antinomies cannot con- 
dition existence ; and all this simply 
means that the ether is unconditioned, 
an entity of no properties but of all 
possibilities, or, more exactly, not an 
entity at all, but an infinite possi- 
bility. 

To our minds it may serve as a 
symbol of an idea we cannot well 



IMMORTALITY 71 

grasp without a symbol, the idea of 
unconditioned consciousness. 

From this the universe has come. 
To this the universe and everything 
in it returns. We have come a long 
way up the scale of evolution guided 
by natural selection. We have come to 
the point where we can begin to do our 
own selecting. We can understand 
something of the rules of the game, 
and see something of the board in our 
immediate neighborhood, although 
our consciousness is so cramped and 
shriveled and atrophied by long con- 
tact with the limitations of material 
existence that we can barely and 
dimly realize the immensity of that 
which is at once our origin and our 
goal. 

But we have our choice. It is not 



72 BUDDHISM AND 

the world, but the universe, that is all 
before us where to choose. We may 
take as much or as little of it as we 
like. We may take the smallest part 
or the whole. But only the whole is 
free. The parts are conditioned by re- 
lations with space and time and each 
other, and if we choose a part, we must 
take with it the adjoining connected 
parts. That is the price. The Hindus 
have long since put this into a popu- 
lar saying, — "What will you have?" 
said God to man. " Take it, and pay 
for it." 

But the choice is ours. You remem- 
ber how well Emerson has said this in 
that great poem called " Days," that 
begins — 

" Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, 
' Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, 



IMMORTALITY 73 

And marching single in an endless file, 
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. 
To each they offer gifts after his will, 
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them 
all." 

Never, perhaps, has the choice been 
better stated. Bread, the symbol of the 
evanescent needs of daily physical life; 
kingdoms, of power; the stars, of the 
highest knowledge of material things; 
and the sky that holds them all, of the 
last and greatest alternative, the ulti- 
mate expansion of consciousness that 
knows neither limit nor boundary. 
Only in this expanded consciousness 
is the will free. Only in limited forms 
is its freedom hampered. The so-called 
necessity that seems to oppose it is 
made up of the limitations of person- 
ality and material existence. 



74 BUDDHISM AND 

There is a Japanese proverb that 
says, "There are many roads up the 
mountain, but it is always the same 
moon that is seen from the top." The 
Japanese themselves, with a liberality 
worthy of imitation, apply this saying 
to different forms of religious belief. 
The mountain may well typify mat- 
ter, and the summit the highest acces- 
sible point on which a climber can 
stand and maintain his separate indi- 
vidual existence in terms of conscious- 
ness drawn from the material world. 
This peak may be accessible by any 
religion, or without any religion; but 
Buddhism and its genetically associated 
systems look beyond. The mountain 
top is the apotheosis of personal ex- 
istence, the highest form of conscious- 
ness that can be expressed in terms 



IMMORTALITY 75 

of separate individuality, — a sublime 
elevation, where many a pilgrim is 
content to pause. Below him are the 
kingdoms; above him are the stars; 
and kingdoms and stars alike are his. 
But it is not the end. Deeper than the 
kingdoms, and higher than the stars, 
is the sky that holds them all. And 
there alone is peace, — that peace 
that the material world cannot give, 
— the peace that passeth understand- 
ing trained on material things, — in- 
finite and eternal peace, — the peace 
of limitless consciousness unified with 
limitless will. 

That peace is NIRVANA. 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



OCT 



«9U 



1903 



029 557 406 9 



